European handball teams up with Sportradar to bring data and video to fans

Sportradar and the marketing arm and subsidiary of the European Handball Federation, EHF Marketing GmbH, have agreed a new long-term partnership to bring “data, streaming, marketing and digital services [to] the federation’s European Cup competitions”.

Sportradar, a leader in data and digital content, will use the partnership to launch ‘Sportradar OTT’, a new platform which will bring digital content to fans of European handball.

The launch took place on Friday 2 June at the ‘European handball goes Tech’ event in Cologne, where club representatives and interested parties were able to see the new partnership between their federation and Sportradar.

“The agreement includes the collection of live data and comprehensive statistics for over 650 European Cup matches per season across all of the EHF’s top club competitions including the men’s and women’s EHF Champions League, EHF Cup and Challenge Cup,” the EHF said in a press release.

Commenting on the agreement, David Szlezak, Managing Director of EHF Marketing GmbH, said, “For the first time, we will be able to provide clubs, media and fans with extensive live statistics and data from every single European club match throughout the season. We are looking forward to working with Sportradar to realise the full potential of this data. Furthermore, Sportradar’s innovative approach to OTT will allow us to continue to expand our own platform, ehfTV.com.”

Carsten Koerl, Sportradar CEO, added, “We sometimes ask sports federations to open their minds and imagine the impact that a joined-up approach across a range of areas can bring. Not all of them can. EHF Marketing, however, grasped the opportunity immediately and with a long-term deal in place, this will be a truly collaborative approach that will ensure that our offering across the EHFs club competitions chimes perfectly with the evolving needs and wants of their fans, sponsors and stakeholders.”

Recently, rightsholders of smaller or minority sports have begun to take control of their own content, streaming games online for free to audiences using social media live-streaming platforms. European Handball isn’t in quite the same position, having built a large following across the continent, but this partnership looks set to put video content front and centre on the EHF’s online platforms as well as providing statistics and data to fans, potentially helping to educate and inform fans in a ways that hasn’t been possible up until now.

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